


the bird and the rifle

by monovosa



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, I AM SORRY, I have no idea what I'm doing here, also there are horses, and has an overarching theme of ptsd, listen it's just very gay and involves a lot of weird western america shit, nothing stated directly but know it's there, specifically car accidents and military, this is like the weirdest horse whisperer/brokeback au, truly i am, who doesn't like horses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monovosa/pseuds/monovosa
Summary: clarke makes it all the way to wyoming before her car breaks down. there, she meets a certain mechanic who's a little too cheerful while telling her she's screwed- but luckily for clarke, she also knows just the person to call if clarke would like a place to stay while she figures this mess out.or:the horse wrangler au that literally not one person asked for.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> [bellatores](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellatores/pseuds/Bellatores) sacrificed her beta self so y'all didn't have to.

The day she returns to New York is bright, unfailing sunny, despite the chill of the late autumn that seeps through Clarke’s gloves and the cap that doesn’t cover her ears. She grabs the brim and adjusts it, smiling up at the building she hasn’t seen in- well, it feels like forever, but that’s probably because she’s seeing it with new eyes.

Her baggage is lighter these days. She hefts the strap of her single bag higher up her shoulder and turns her nose into the collar of her shirt. She’d saved this shirt for the last day of her trip, buried it deep into the bottom of the rucksack, and it still smells strongly of all the things that Clarke knows as _good_. There’s the scent of horses, warm and strong, the undertone of feed and the last of the summer grasses. Clarke imagines she can smell the truck there too, the metal-and-gasoline of the shed that houses Old Blue whenever she’s not needed on the farm.

She breathes a little deeper and knows that the gentle flutter of her stomach tells true. There’s Lexa here too, forever underlying everything, sweet and clean.

One more inhale and the accompanying exhale. Clarke steps up and opens the door.

 


	2. chapter one

The day he leaves is calm, warm and true. The day she leaves is temper, cold and blue.

It’s only fitting, Clarke supposes, twisting the key to her apartment to lock the door. Her sneakers squeak against the linoleum flooring of the complex as she makes her way downstairs. Her twin duffel bags and satchel bump into the railings on either side and she hefts them a little higher every few steps, intent on making it down without falling. She’s been doing enough falling, lately.

The sky is in the midst of upheaval when she reaches the dirty sidewalk and dirtier air. New York, as always, smells of wet garbage and humanity. Clarke inhales gratefully once, twice, three times. It’s probably going to be a strange thing to miss, if she misses it once she’s cleared the invisible border that draws around the city like the trawl of a fishing rig. It takes nearly everyone a few weeks, months, even years to get used to the smell of the city. It didn’t take Clarke any time at all.

_“It stinks,” her dad laughs into the lingering dawn as he hauls the mountains of stuff out of the backseat of the Forester. “Jesus, Clarke. This city fucking reeks.”_

_“Jake.” Her mother’s voice is expected and familiar. Clarke and her dad share a smile, the same smile. Where would they be without Abby’s admonishments? In hell, probably, her dad had mused once. Or jail. Or both._

_“Sorry, babe.” He wraps an arm around her in apology. She leans in, quick to forgive, and presses a kiss to his cheek. Predictability is her strong suit: she wrinkles her nose at the scruff he’d neglected to shave off, citing too early of a start time to properly prepare. Clarke knows he misses his beard._

_“Can you two focus? Trying to start the rest of my life, here.”_

_Jake squeezes Abby’s shoulders one more time before releasing her and hefting up a box. “Too right, Princess. Let’s do this.”_

Let’s do this, Clarke thinks. Except now there’s no _let’s_. Just her and two bags and a satchel and a hand unthinkingly waving down a taxi to take her somewhere. Her phone is buried deep in her pocket and eventually she’ll need to tell her mom where she’s going. It’s just that- well, Clarke doesn’t know where she’s going. Not anymore.

Upstairs, stacks of books are piled on her desk, waiting to be poured into her brain so one day she can help people the way her mom helps people. Her lab coat- custom, a gift from the day she was accepted to NYU’s medical program- is folded neatly over her chair. Her room as a whole is different, even from how it was a month ago. Clarke is different too. And that’s why she’s leaving.

Nobody knows yet, nobody but her roommate, who promised to keep her trap shut until Clarke lets her know where she lands. She didn't seem surprised to find Clarke packing yesterday, shortly after returning from campus.

_“How was your exam?” Chelsea’s voice is soft, that same tone people that people have been using since the accident. The ‘if you speak too loudly, she’ll fly to pieces’ voice. The ‘I’m not sure what to say’ voice. The ‘what do you say to a girl whose dad died bringing her home from her birthday dinner’ voice. Clarke knows it well by now. She wants to go somewhere where nobody knows to use it._

_“Fine.” Better than fine, actually. Instantly available online grading means she knows she’s aced it and set the curve for the cohort that have grown to love and hate Clarke Griffin, the outgoing, far-too-clever daughter of a doctor, who studies and smiles with the same calm confidence. She’d aced it and immediately gone to the registrar to go on formal and indefinite leave. “I’m leaving.”_

_Chelsea nods for what seems like a few minutes before her words catch up. Her tone is the same as before. “Where to?”_

_“Don’t know. First to my parents’- mom’s, and then…” Clarke shrugs. She’s pretty sure the thing about stopping at her family home is a lie, but there’s no reason on earth for Chelsea to know that. She’d only worry._

_She’ll call her mom eventually. For now, well. Getting her favorite jeans into this bag seems like the only thing on earth that matters._

So here Clarke is, standing out in the stormy mess of New York in the fall, bags packed and a thousand bucks pulled from her savings ( _not_ from the inheritance that the lawyers and her mom said was hers, never from that) and a vague idea that going west  is a good idea. She’s never really been west, not as an adult anyway. Growing up in Philly hadn’t broadened her horizons much and with the epicenter of her world so nearby, moving to New York had been a no-brainer. Now, Clarke finds herself wishing for that self-determination and coming up empty. For the very first time in her life, she has absolutely no idea where she’s going.

First things first, though, now that her belongings are packed and her rent is cleared through the rest of the year, courtesy of her grandfather’s , meant to stock her on expensive medical texts and caffeine through next year. She sticks a hand out, ignoring the tremble, and hails a cab. Usually she wouldn’t be caught dead in one of the yellow cash-suckers, but it is what it is, and the train seems even worse than a car at this point. Too many people, which is part of why she’s running.

The crowds that once soothed her now make her want to scream and never stop. It’s getting to be a problem.

The cab screeches to a halt and Clarke forces herself in, comforted by the back seat. She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to sit in the passenger side of a car ever again. She tucks herself behind the driver’s seat, settles her bags protectively around her, and clears her throat.

“How far out of the city will this get me?” She holds up a few bills. The cabbie eyes her speculatively, clearly debating the trip, then punches the ticker.

“A ways.”

Clarke nods and shifts back into the seat. “Then go.”

They do. They drive and drive, first in halting wrenches of metal and screaming brakes, then a little smoother in short glides, until they’ve cleared the worst of the traffic. They get far enough that the wet garbage smell fades to the background, and Clarke keeps her gaze firmly on the slide of raindrops against her window. The cabbie doesn’t say anything- another thing about the city that Clarke loves- and too soon they’re reaching the end of her fare. The car swerves to the curb and Clarke shakes her head to reorient herself. Her mouth screws up for a second when the cabbie turns to face her. Her fingers pat her pocket and fish out another bill.

“How about the nearest stop?”

They’re far enough out by the time that the stop that the crowded bus isn’t the worst step she’s ever taken, not by far. She chooses the cheapest Greyhound heading west and buys her ticket, chooses a seat on the driver’s side and plugs her phone in and connects to Wi-Fi while she waits for the rest of the seats to fill. She pulls up her mom’s number and thumbs in the quickest message she can think of that’ll prevent a phone call.

_Heading out of town for a while. Nothing to worry about- aced my test, gotta clear my head. The school knows_.

The reply comes much faster than it would’ve back in the days when her mom worked herself to exhaustion. Clarke wishes she’d start that up again.

_Okay. Call me tomorrow_.

This trip will last far more than a day, but there’s no reason for Abby to know that quite yet. Clarke doesn’t respond and instead tucks herself down into the seat and ramps the volume on Spotify. She’s not worried about missing her stop. As far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t have one.

The cities pass in a blur, crammed together and tall at first, shorter and spaced out as the hours pass and Clarke’s ass goes numb from the worn seat of the bus. Next to her, her neighbor snores a rumbling beat she can just barely make out over the bass of her music. He’d tried to make conversation when he’d joined up less than an hour into the trip, but given up quickly enough with a mutter once he saw that Clarke wasn’t interested in his company. She’d steadily ignored him in favor of the window, sleep evading her as the miles trickled by. Now, with the light dimming and the sun creeping beneath the horizon, Clarke can feel herself being lulled to sleep to the faint sounds of the bus and the steady thump of the rhythm in her ears.

She wakes in the middle of the night or very early morning, phone buzzing with a text from a classmate-

_Way to wreck the curve, Griffin. Beers?_

-and she rubs at her eyes, regretting the motion when the heel of her hand comes away blackened with the mascara she doesn’t remember applying. It’s probably a few days old, at this point. Her neighbor has gone and been replaced by a middle-aged woman whose hair reminds her of her mother. When the lady turns, it’s to reveal two bloodshot blue eyes the color of the storm that’s followed them as they travel.

“Mornin’.”

Clarke shrugs out an earbud and nods. “Hey. Where are we?”

“Coming out of Pittsburgh.” Clarke does a little mental math and nods again. “Where you headed?”

This time, Clarke shakes her head. The woman’s mouth falls into a flat line and Clarke is once again reminded of her mother. Clarke tries a little smile, an apology to the woman whose text she still hasn’t answered. She’s not sure the smile works, but it seems to appease the stranger.

“Want me to wake you up for anything?”

“Dawn,” Clarke decides. “Thanks.” With that, she puts her earbud back in and tugs the edge of her NYU sweatshirt’s hood as far down her forehead as it’ll go, and sinks back into sleep.

She wakes to a gentle hand on her shoulder and jumps a little till  she recognizes the woman.

“It’s dawn, darlin’.”

There’s a city behind them, catching the rays of sunlight as the sun creeps up, and as she twists in her seat to stare forward she catches sight of two signs- an Ohio interstate and a used car lot- and Clarke knows what she wants to do. 

The bus driver isn’t impressed by Clarke asking to be let off so shortly after Columbus- _“You coulda just gotten off at the designated stop, y’know,”-_ but two years of med school in New York City have hardened Clarke well beyond hearing unnecessary criticism. She hops off the bus and pulls her duffel bags out from underneath the passenger carriage. The bus emits foul-smelling fumes as it rumbles away and Clarke is suddenly, acutely uncertain.

There’s a rusty sign just before her bragging of the cheap prices of the used cars to be found in the shoddily bedecked lot. Clarke doesn’t know the first damn thing about cars and has never owned one, but she squares her shoulders and weaves between the parked vehicles and the wind-torn banners to reach what she assumes in the office.

“Hello?” There’s no immediate response. The office is decorated in sun-bleached calendars and posters of cars that Clarke assumes were the latest and greatest in the eighties. She waits a minute or more before a man steps out from the back room and starts.

“What? Oh, hi- I’m so sorry, I was in the back and- I’m Morrie, how can I help you, Miss…?”

“Clarke,” Clarke supplies. “Clarke is fine. I need a car.”

“Well, Clarke,” his smile is genuine enough, she thinks. “I’d feed you the line about how you’ve come to the right place, but you seem like you might’ve had enough of lines. Am I right?” His  gesture to her bags almost has her smiling. She shucks them to the floor and nods toward the lot.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

-

She ends up choosing mostly on price alone, imagining the groan of her account as she swipes her card (her mom is going to flip when she sees the charge come through on Clarke’s emergency credit line) and signing the paperwork without reading a word. Morrie hands her the keys and promises to keep his phone on in case something goes wrong. It’s not a comfort to hear him say it, but Clarke shakes it off as she throws her bags into the back seat and contemplates the driver’s seat.

It’s just a car, she thinks. Just a car. One car does not represent another.

It takes her twenty minutes to get it and drive it around the corner, the whine of some engine part accompanying her till the engine shifts to second. Safely out of sight of Morrie, she scrambles from the front seat and sits on the curb, shaking. It takes her another hour to get the courage to climb back in and take off at a speed over thirty.

She recognizes enough of the signs to know that she should probably call her mother to come get her and then prioritize getting a therapy appointment lined up. Instead, Clarke fiddles with the knobs in the car until she finds the first not-country music station and tries to relax enough to release her hands from the ten-and-two position. That takes another hour.

By the time she’s relaxed enough to fully settle back against the worn cushions of her most recent purchase, she’s realized she has no idea where she’s going.

She’s still heading resolutely west, driving into the country and through the small towns that dot the interstate, having left major city and suburban dwellings behind with Morrie’s. Morrie had done her a solid and kept the tank on FULL while the car was on the lot so she doesn’t need to stop for gas for a while, but eventually Clarke knows she’ll need a plan. Sooner, she’ll need sleep.

The latter comes first, as suspected, and she pulls into a motel past midnight. The young woman behind the desk eyes Clarke, her duffel bags, and the gashes on her cheek and wrist with suspicion, but says nothing. Her driver’s license accompanies the card she hands over (preferring to save her cash for emergencies, now that she’s thinking a little more clearly) and the receptionist visibly relaxes when she sees Clarke’s age.

Her non-smoking room smells of smoke and what might be wet dog. Clarke, on principle, hates dirty bed sheets (and the smell of smoke, and the smell of dog), but her headphones go back in and she is asleep as soon as her head hits the thin pillows she’s stacked on top of one another. There’s a lingering memory of hearing some drunken noise when she wakes, but otherwise her sleep is mercifully peaceful.

Sore back from the shitty mattress aside, she’s feeling rested as she checks out and gets back into her car. A quick check of her phone reveals that she’s both a relatively short drive from the border of Kansas and Colorado, with no true memory of Indiana, Illinois, or Missouri, with the exception of vague remembrance of swinging just wide of big cities. It also reveals two missed calls and two missed texts from her mother.

_Clarke, will you be calling me tonight?_

_Clarke, call me_.

Clarke’s thumb hovers over the phone icon before selecting the speech bubble that leads to her texts. She types out a quick text- _sorry, enjoying the scenery of not-New York City. call you when i have a second okay?_ \- and starts up her car.

It whines, as usual, but it’s almost taking on a personable quality at this point. Clarke wonders if thinking such things is a coping mechanism, or if everyone feels this way about their car. She pats the ugly red plastic of the dash and murmurs, “I should probably give you a name, huh, you bucket of bolts? Would you like that?”

The engine hiccups and Clarke can see a poof of dark exhaust in her rear view mirror. It’s probably not good, but the car is picking up speed just fine, so she shrugs and tries to swallow down the cold tremble of fear.

“Bucket of Bolts it is. C’mon, Bolt. Let’s see what Colorado has to offer.”

After that, it’s mostly quiet save the radio, churning out still not-country music as they meander their way toward and then across the border, stopping only to pay the toll. Morrie also included (more like left) an old map in the glove box and Clarke turns to that as her reception on her phone comes and goes. There’s really no point in using Maps when you haven’t got a destination, and so Clarke continues along I-70, hoping that she’s going somewhere that’ll help ease the tension she still hasn’t been able to shake from her chest. The scratches on her wrist have scabbed over and are itching, and she stares at them from time to time as she and Bolt make their way across the landscape that is still flat and only filled with the occasional towns that provide the gas stations that Bolt needs to keep going. Clarke’s aware that eventually she’s going to need to stop and reevaluate her finances and plan. Or evaluate them to begin with. But for now, she can’t seem to take her foot off the gas pedal.

The opportunity to consider her choices comes as Denver looms before her, just past a quick lunch snagged from a diner attached to one such gas station. Clarke pulls over just as the traffic starts to thicken and pulls out the map. Her eyes barely see the lines.

_“Princess- wake up, look where we are.”_

_Ten-year-old Clarke blinks in the sunlight and shifts upright against the pillow she’s propped on the door of her parents’ car. They’d left before the sun had risen and her dad had promised adventure as he’d tucked his cranky daughter into the fleece of her blanket, promised that she’d see mountains for the first time and would always feel drawn to them._

_Denver is like nothing she’s ever seen. The vastness is familiar, but different at the same time. Mountains fill the backdrop of the city and Clarke gapes at them, unaware of the smile her parents are sharing at the sight of their daughter struck unusually speechless. Clarke presses her hands into the cold of the window and whispers, “Wow.”_

_“Wow is right, huh?” Jake’s hands are sure as he turns the wheel and weaves them through traffic. “Do you want to climb a mountain, Clarke?”_

Those mountains are still there, Clarke knows. She thinks she can just barely make them out, the exact same as they had been that day over a decade before, the shadows guarding their city with the steadfastness that Clarke can no longer sense in her own life. She runs a hand through the curls that are escaping her hair tie and considers the map.

For the first time, she knows something about her trip: she is not going to Denver. It’s not much, but it’s something, a direction at last. She pulls her car back into gear and merges back into traffic to swing due north on the first exit she can find. She’ll figure the rest out as she goes, but for now, swinging away feels almost good, and almost not like running away.

It takes her two hours to get round the clusterfuck that is Denver, and another two to get solidly over the state line into Wyoming. It’s more mountains, she knows, but something about heading north and away from her memories feels too good for her to care. The road leads north, then west, then north again, and before too long, she’s reached a stopping point for dinner and for gas. She eyes the lonely motels that she passes as she rolls across prairie, always against the backdrop of the mountains, and pauses in a little town of Native naming when the reservoir catches her eye.

The cheapest motel in town is everything that the others have been, boasting peeling wallpaper and the perma-smell of old cigarettes and something intangible under the surface. The receptionist- this time a gangly old man who doesn’t check her ID or give any sign of a pause when he sees her wounds- points her toward the stack of brochures on the desk.

“In case you’re wanting to look around.”

She doesn’t. Clarke has no interest in actually visiting the body of water that’d caught her eye. Still, she smiles a little and pulls the top brochure off the stack, some feeling of politeness winning over the numbness of her body and mind.

“Thanks,” she mutters, and goes to settle into her room.

She leaves before anyone returns to man the desk, woken by a nightmare of screeching tires and smashing glass. She’s shaking as she pushes the keys into the slot marked _Early Checkout_ , the _C_ half-peeled off the tinny metal of the box that’s bolted down to the desk. Returning to the car should feel like hell, but instead it’s a comfort, and the whine of Bolts starting up is a comfort too.

Clarke makes it barely an hour and a half before the whine returns, this time in full-force as she’s driving rather than just as she lurches way from stoplights and after turning the engine over, and she frowns. The mountains are much closer now and the towns further and further apart, and it’s in-between two of these towns when Bolt gives a loud cough that makes Clarke jump, and then a wet splutter sounds from the engine and Bolt loses power entirely. Clarke barely has the presence of mind to safely guide Bolt to the side of the road before throwing herself out the door and away from the vehicle, breathing hard as smoke rises from underneath the hood and creeps into the clear, cold mountain air.

“Fuck,” Clarke says, hands shaking and knees weak. She stumbles to look around once the smoke dissipates and she’s fairly certain Bolts isn’t about to blow on her, then raises her voice to a half-scream. “ _Fuck_.”

There’s nothing but a mountain range and a prairie opposite to catch the sound.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ monovosa on tumblr for all things fic and gay, probably.


	3. chapter two

Clarke creeps back into Bolt as soon as she dares, rescuing her phone from where she’d propped it against the console. She checks the charge- mostly full, thanks to the fact that she’s been using the paper map- and thumbs through her contacts till she finds AAA. Her signal is terrible, but two tries lead her to a dial tone, her hands shaking with relief as she surveys the empty fields and mountains in the distance.

“Yes, hello? My name is Clarke Griffin and um, my car just died. I- no, I’m not quite sure where I am, give me a second-”

A little map-figuring (Clarke says a silent prayer up for her seventh grade geography teacher for insisting that the class knew how to reckon distance) and the customer service rep reassures her that they’ll put a call in for the nearest automotive shop. Clarke is far enough out that it’ll have to be a privately-owned shop, but she’s far from the first person to break down in the middle of nowhere, and the rep promises to confirm when someone is on their way.

“If I can’t get through to you, please stay put and call me again in a couple hours if no one has come by. You’re not too far out.”

It doesn’t exactly ease the pit in Clarke’s stomach, but it’s good enough. She thanks the rep and ends the call. She hopes they don’t call Abby, the policy holder, for some reason or another. Clarke is not in the mood to deal with all the missed calls and panicked (or judgmental) texts whenever she gets back into civilization.

The minutes pass slowly. Clarke digs up a book from one of her bags, some trash novel she’d thrown in when she was packing, but it doesn’t hold her attention. She takes to wandering as far up and down the road as she dares, always well within sight of Bolt, though she could probably wander for miles and still be able to pick out the ugly red Escort, no matter what. Clarke is halfheartedly tossing rocks at an interstate sign when something in the distance catches her eye.

Her blood pressure skyrockets with adrenaline and she squints, cupping her hand over the top of her eyebrows as though that’ll help her eyesight. The approaching vehicle is driving pretty quickly and kicking up clouds of dust as it goes, cutting a ninety degree angle to shift onto the hardtop and picking up even more speed after that. Clarke mutters her thanks to whatever God might be listening when it gets close enough for her to recognize that it’s a tow truck.

It’s an old thing, big and rusty and with a company name that Clarke can hardly make out on the side, the letters faded by sun and the coat of dust that covers the whole truck. It whips around on the hardtop and slowly backs up until it’s close to Bolt. The door cracks open and two legs swing out, one encased in a complicated-looking brace.

“Heya,” the girl calls, long hair swinging in a ponytail and baseball cap tucked firmly against her skull. “I’m Raven. AAA called me. You Clarke?”

Clarke nods and open her mouth to speak, then realizes that her mouth is dry. She swallows a couple times while the girl- Raven- waits with a patiently amused look on her face. She’s already poking around Bolt, but her eyes stay trained on Clarke.

“Yeah, uh. That’s me. I was driving and all of a sudden…”

Lost for words, she trails her hand through the air in a motion that Raven seems to interpret just fine.

“Smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“Any noises along with it or just, y’know, boom?”

“Sort of a…” Clarke coughs awkwardly, trying to mimic the wet splutter that Bolt had given before she died. Raven seems to take it well enough and nods.

“Sure. Well, obviously she’s not going anywhere unless we get her lifted, so let me just get right on that and then we’ll get you into town.”

She makes her way back to the truck and fiddles with a pressurized switch on the back, lowering the deck of the truck far enough for it to bob against the ground. Clarke wonders if she ought to be helping somehow, but Raven seems content to work by herself and doesn’t spare Clarke another glance as she hooks cables to Bolt and then sets the truck to dragging the car, set to neutral, up the ramp and onto the bed.

“C’mere,” Raven says suddenly, her hands working quickly to strap Bolt down. Clarke obliges and steps closer, aware that she never removed her bags from the car and she’s got a hold of just her cell phone and a couple rocks. She lets the rocks drop to the ground as subtly as possible. Raven’s eyes catch the motion anyway.

“I’m not from around here.”

Raven laughs, but it’s not cruel. “Yeah, I got that. Where you from?” Her hands are still busy, but her eyes dart over Clarke’s face and linger over where Clarke knows there are still cuts and bruises from the accident. She wonders, not for the first time, just what people think when they see her. If Raven’s frown is anything to go by, it’s not flattering.

“New York.”

“No shit.” Raven whistles and straightens, brushing her hands off on the coverall she’s wearing over a tight, dusty black tank. She keeps looking at Clarke’s injuries in a way that makes Clarke uncomfortable. “Long way from home. If that’s home.”

Clarke doesn’t miss the implied question. “I’ve been driving for a while.”

“Sure.” Raven adjusts her cap and jerks her head back toward the truck. “All right, Big City. Let’s get you back to the shop and we can see if I can’t salvage this hunk of junk.”

They make it back into the truck before Raven seems to remember her manners which, up till this point, have been spare but genuine enough. “Sorry." Clarke shoots her a questioning look. "That I called your car a piece of crap.”

“That’s okay,” Clarke sighs as she straps in and looks out the window. The truck comes to life under Raven’s hands and catches the first gear, pulling away from the side of the road. “I said the same thing myself when I bought her.”

After that, it’s mostly quiet in the truck. The engine rumbles along and the radio, coaxed by a few clever twists of Raven’s fingertips, finds what Clarke guesses is an old school country station. Raven hums but doesn’t sing along, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. Clarke forgets to ask where they’re headed and settles for watching the mountains creep ever nearer. They pass through one tiny town, then another, and Raven hooks a left for a town a couple miles off the highway.

There’s an auto shop on the edge that Raven sidles into. The town looks to be what every other town has been, albeit a bit bigger: there’s a gas station within sight, and the streets off the main drag are dotted with well-worn houses. Raven turns to study Clarke as she glances over the decrepit picket fences, dogs tied out, and lawn chairs scattered over the meager grass.

“Welcome to Cody, middle of nowhere.”

Clarke tries a chuckle. It mostly works. “Thanks. Glad to be here, I guess.”

“Better than the side of the highway,” Raven agrees amicably enough, and swings out to start unloading the truck bed. Clarke stands awkwardly by until Raven catches sight of her and waves toward what appears to be the office door. “Go on, make yourself at home. I put coffee on shortly before I got the call.”

Clarke nods and makes for the office. Inside, it’s warm, lined with worn chairs and smelling of coffee and oil. There are chipped mugs lined up by the coffee pot instead of paper cups, no cream or sugar in sight. Clarke pours herself a cup and eyes the phone charger plugged into the wall on the other side of the low desk. Figuring Raven won’t need it for her own phone anytime soon, Clarke takes the chance to plug her phone in, thumbing across multiple apps to make sure she hasn’t missed anything of importance. She hasn’t.

Much like Bolt’s old home, there are collections of faded calendars and posters scattered across walls that could use a washing. Most depict classic cars and a few advertise farm equipment and seed companies. All but the calendar nearest the desk are flipped to the wrong month. The calendar in use portrays a beautiful woman sprawled across the hood of a muscle car. Someone has taken great care to give both the woman and the car a permanent marker mustache. Clarke gives the rendering a thin smile before taking her mug of coffee through the front door and around to the side of the building, where Bolt is vaulted into the air and Raven is staring up at the innards with a frown.

“So?”

“So… you’re fucked.” Raven winces a little at Clarke’s expression and gestures up toward Bolt with a flashlight. “Like, multiple ways. You’ve got about a thousand dollars’ worth of engine trouble, and I put her up just to check and her front axel is pretty… do you care, or are you already past that point?”

Clarke turns the mug in her hands, feeling a little numb. “I’m, um, pretty past that point. Anything past a couple hundred bucks is past that point.”

Raven nods as if she had expected such an answer. She bobs the flashlight back up. “Lemme just- you go back inside and I’ll meet you in a sec, okay? Just half a second.”

There’s something in Raven’s voice that disquiets Clarke, but she heads back as she’s told because what else is she supposed to do? The shutters on the window of the door clack when she closes it and she pours a refill of the coffee she’s barely made a dent in. She’ll probably have to call her mother at this point, explain that she’s somehow in Wyoming, epicenter of nowhere, and that the car she blew a good chunk of savings on is no longer operable or repairable. Resigned, Clarke pulls her phone off the charger and swipes in her password.

Just as she’s pulling up her Favorites list, Raven enters the office, offering Clarke a rough grin that looks more like a grimace.

“Hey, so- before you go calling anyone, can I just say something?” Clarke nods and Raven takes a deep breath.

“Look, I’m probably the world’s most private person, let’s just get that out of the way. And I’m the last person that wants to make shitty assumptions or try to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong or whatever, and that’s not what I’m trying to do here.” Something in Clarke roils up from the base of her stomach to the edge of her throat and she opens her mouth, but Raven raises a hand. “Please, just hear me out. So I’ve seen my fair share of situations that look a lot like this, and I’m sure the backstory is different every time, but I think you’re maybe trying to not go back to where you came from, and I can help with that.

I can’t fix your car unless you give me way more than it’s worth, and it’s worth more or less nothing. But I can give you that more or less nothing if you’ll agree to sell it for scraps. And I figure you don’t really want to go back just yet, so I’ve got a proposal for you. And you can tell me to fuck off or whatever, no offense taken, but hear me out just a second longer.”

She steps into Clarke’s space slowly and pulls a sheet, half-hidden by the mustached calendar, off the dusty wall and shows Clarke the sparse print.

 _For Rent: 1 Room + Bath_  
Rent By Week or Month  
$100/Week Firm, Long Term Negotiable  
Must Like Horses

Clarke frowns, confused, and shakes her head. “I’m not looking to move out here, Raven.”

Raven nods quickly and twists her wrist, sending the paper in a dizzy, captive circle. “Yeah, no, I get that. What I’m saying is that I can give you enough to let you hang out here for a week or whatever, let you figure your shit out, give you a breather. Because you look like you need one. And this girl, she’s good shit.”

Clarke mouths wordlessly for a second. It’s fast, it’s too much, she doesn’t know the girl in front of her, much less the apparent girl behind the paper, but a glance down at her phone and the sight of her thumb still hovering over _Abby_ is enough to make her nod.

“Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Raven grins and nods, bobs behind the desk to pull a phone out of a drawer and send off a rapid-fire text. She pins the advertisement back up with care- this time with plenty of space, not blocked by anything- and flops down into a chair.

“All right. Let’s cash you out and you can get your stuff from your car, okay? Lexa might be a sec, she’s usually working right now.”

She produces a beaten-up register from the same drawer as the phone and unlocks it with a set of keys that appear from one of many pockets. It’s not until she’s shuffled through a couple hundred bucks and made Clarke fill out a form with her contact information and a signature that Clarke realizes she’s waiting for Raven to make a call that’s already been made.

“Is the world’s most private person also in the habit of assuming and calling before making sure that’s what someone else wants?”

Raven shoots her a side-eyed glance tinged with something that might be respect and shrugs.

“I texted her to see what she was up to, she’s got a lot going on and can take half a damn decade to get back to me. And I’m pretty good at reading people. I don’t know you, but I know the signs, and like I said- Lexa is good shit, all right? Sorry for assuming or whatever, but I figured I’d get a move on so you can be somewhere safe by dark.”

It’s a little ominous, but the bills fold neatly into Clarke’s wallet, and there’s not much more to say after that.

“Okay.” Clarke checks her phone out of habit and not a little anxiety, and sighs. “And, you know, thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” Raven assures her, and her smile is good enough for the time being.

Clarke returns her wallet to the safety of her pocket and follows Raven back out to the garage, where Bolt has been lowered to the oil-stained floor of the workspace. The trunk is already popped to reveal Clarke’s luggage and she hauls it out piece by piece, depositing it in the relatively clean space off to the side of the stall. It’s not much and Raven waves a hand when Clarke offers to move it outside.

“Nah, leave it. Listen, Lexa says she’ll be here after the evening feed, which could take a bit. There’s a bar down the main drag that’s got a pretty decent burger and whatever if you want to get some food while you wait.” Clarke’s stomach growls on cue and Raven smiles. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Listen, I’ll just haul this piece of junk outta here and you get some nourishment in you, okay? I’ll bring Lexa down when she gets here. Just stick to the bottled beer, the taps haven’t been cleaned in an age.”

That drags a weak laugh out of Clarke, who nods and picks up her satchel. Raven points in the general direction of the bar and Clarke sets off with a wave, offering one last pat to the dented hood of old Bolt, which looks twice as miserable with smoke stains.

“Oh, and Raven?” Clarke calls back, turning to look over her shoulder as she makes her way across the dust and dirt of the garage drive. Raven hums, already slipping into the front seat to shift the car into neutral. “Thanks.”

Raven regards her for a moment, face serious despite the grin tugging at the edges of her mouth.

“Yeah, of course. Any time, Big City.”

Clarke feels a strange wash of certainty break over her, inexplicable but welcome. With a nod, she turns back to the road and begins the walk to town.

It doesn’t take long, fifteen minutes passing under the shifting afternoon sunlight in what feels like a matter of moments. A dog barks at her as she goes, a little black and white cattle dog with a bandana for a collar, and Clarke laughs at the absurdity of the idea of snapping a picture and sending it back to her friends in New York. It’s a different world here, dry and hazy and so much clearer than the city, the peeling paint on fences and the trucks parked in cracked driveways. A man out watering his lawn waves at her but says nothing, Clarke’s own wave apparently good enough to prevent questioning, and she hoists her satchel higher on her shoulder and squints into the horizon. There’s a collection of houses here in what must be the residential neighborhood and, just beyond them, there’s an unreadable sign that somehow still speaks to its nature. The sign boasts a picture of a horse drinking a beer upon closer inspection, and Clarke does actually snap an inconspicuous picture before heading inside.

The opening of the door prompts a bell to ring and it’s a good minute before a woman comes out of the back room, wiping her hands on her jean shorts and appraising Clarke with an eagle eye. Clarke nods and sidles up to the worn wood of the bar, not bothering with a booth in an empty room, and drags her wallet out of her back pocket.

“Hey. Um, Raven sent me, I’m waiting on some repairs.”

The woman nods and pulls a frosted glass out of a freezer that’s hidden beneath the bar. “All right. What’ll you have?”

Clarke is in the mood for water but doesn’t immediately say so, just shrugs and smiles. “Whatever’s good. And in a bottle.”

“Sure.” A bottle of Miller appears. Still no sign of a menu. “Food?”

“Please,” Clarke says with a nod, fingering at the folded cash in her wallet. “I hear you make a mean burger.”

A smile cracks the woman’s face and she puts a water glass up on the bar for good measure, filling it with a few chunks of ice. “Raven sent you, all right. Let me get that order in. Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks,” Clarke says with no small amount of sincerity, lifting the already-sweating glass to her mouth once it’s set down and taking a few gulps of water, then tipping the mouth of the beer into the frosted glass. Her sole companion in the bar leaves the way she came and Clarke is left to consider the room for the first time. It’s everything she would’ve guessed: warm and dark hardwood with an eclectic pattern of neon beer signs, a few well-loved pool tables gathered at one end of the crowded space, and a few dozen photographs of what appear to be cowboys and men in suits decorating the walls.

 _If my friends could see me now_ , she thinks with a smile, remembering the picture of the horse and the beer, and drains a third of her own.

The woman- Annie, as she introduces herself after asking after Clarke’s name- returns in a few minutes with a freshly grilled burger and more fries than Clarke could ever hope to eat, a pile of tomato, lettuce, and onion heaped half over the potatoes. Clarke digs in without preamble and nods to a second round of beer and water, drinking both down by the time she’s finished nearly all of the food. Annie seems pleased with the empty plate and pours herself a drink before dragging a stool into the bar, sitting down across from Clarke.

“So. Not from around here, are you?”

Clarke shakes her head and swallows the last of the fries, then the beer. Annie pulls out another bottle and splashes it into the stein without asking and Clarke’s too polite to say no. She sets on her water glass before speaking.

“No. From out east.”

“East, huh?” Annie sips at her own beer (from the tap, Clarke notes with suspicion) and mulls that over for a minute. “Thought you’d be rude.”

That gets a barking laugh from Clarke which turns into a splutter as her first sip of her third beer goes down the wrong tube. Annie reaches across to clap her on the back- unhelpful, but kind- and waits for her to clear her throat.

“I want to deny it, but I can’t. I was raised just outside of the city, and it still took me some getting used to, when I first moved there.”

Annie nods but doesn’t press on which city or why Clarke moved, and Clarke is grateful. She opens her mouth to say something else- what, she’s not quite sure- when the bell jingles and Annie’s attention shifts.

“Ah, Lexa. Was wondering when you were going to get here.” Annie pulls up a bottle of dark liquid and pours an indiscriminate amount into a short glass and sets it on the bar. “Let me just go to the back for a moment. Call if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Annie.” The voice behind Clarke is smooth, quiet, and she feels like she’s turning in water when she glances behind her.

It’s a woman, as expected, but even from the bar stool, she cuts an imposing figure. She’s tall and slim, hair obscured by a baseball cap fitted neatly on her head, and her shirtsleeves are rolled up to reveal faint tan lines on her wrists. Clarke glances over her once, then twice, and stands.

“You must be Lexa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lexa! 
> 
> i'm monovosa on that tumblr. come say hey re: these nerds.
> 
> also go see [bellatores](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellatores/pseuds/Bellatores), who is a world-class beta and clexa rant buddy. thank you, pal.


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